


Man Down Over Halmad

by ladykiki



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Gen, Vehicle Crash, Wraith Squadron - Freeform, X-Wing series, could be read as pre-slash, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 13:53:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5628934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladykiki/pseuds/ladykiki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jared's TIE Inceptor is hit. The best option really is a crash landing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Man Down Over Halmad

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "vehicle crash" square on my h/c_bingo card. 
> 
> It was been a really long time since I've read the books, but my brain insisted I write this once I started exploring options other than cars for crashes. I hope one day my muse will support going back to do this properly.

Jared twisted the yoke and hauled back, intending to follow Jensen through a corkscrew loop, when he felt a jolt through his Interceptor like a giant boot had kicked him. His display panel flashed with red error messages. His stick went dead. The stars jumped, then whirled crazily through the viewscreen. 

_I’m hit_ , he realized, even as he kept his hand steady, the stick moving without resistance in his hand. His wings were intact, as was the cockpit, so—even before his brain had time to register the diagnostics scrolling rapidly across his heads-up display—Jared figured the hit had taken out his engine. 

Ejecting wasn’t an option, even if he’d been in an X-wing where it legitimately was, not over Halmad in the middle of an undercover operation to take out warlord Zsinj. Heading out to space would either result in a cold, slow death, or an opportunistic pilot ending him, possibly with Jensen getting in the way and going first—because he was a stupid, self-sacrificing idiot that way. 

Which really only left Jared with one option. 

When the stick jolted back to life, he hauled back enough to kill the spin—plummeting to die in a fiery crash against the planet’s crust was sucky enough without making himself sick first—then used the last of his self-determination to aim for the planet. 

He held on, even after gravity had taken over, doing his best to steer, to increase the odds that he might survive this landing, because the last he’d seen Jensen was still alive, and he couldn’t quite find it in himself to check out peaceably when Jensen was counting on him to come back. 

*

He blacked out on impact. Probably. He couldn’t really remember, but he came to mostly on his back, with his helmet skewed, the left wing twisted at an awkward angle, and an ominous crack spider-webbing his front viewport. Jared blinked. 

A deep breath brought pain shooting through his chest and the taste of blood on the back of his tongue. His arms worked, which was a relief, but he found two broken ribs, which wasn’t, especially since he was pretty sure one of them was responsible for the coopery aftertaste. On the bright side, though, he was pretty sure the pointy sucker hadn’t actually penetrated his lung, which made the prospect of moving just this side of excruciating but hopefully unlikely to kill him.

He was banking on time doing that for him. He was pretty sure he’d busted his spleen. 

When he got back to civilization, he was going to have to lodge a complaint about harness safety in Imperial starfighters. But, first, he needed to get out of the Interceptor. He needed to grab anything that potentially indentified him, plus his med-bag, and he needed to elude capture. With broken ribs. And a probably busted spleen. 

Someone owed him a really nice vacation on a resort planet if he managed to pull this off. He’d get Jensen on that, just as soon as he managed to move.

It took a couple tries, and more than a couple breaths, but he got out. He got out and away and into the river with none of his pursuit any the wiser—he hoped. Crawling sucked, but he couldn’t walk. He was counting himself lucky he could crawl. Or, you know, float-swim. The crawling thing was easier in the water, anyway, even if it was a good bit colder and it was getting hard to feel his arms. The current did most of the work for him, really. He just had to keep from drowning.

His hand slipped, going out from under him and spiking pain through his chest. His head went under and he really hoped he wasn’t picking up any flesh-eating bacteria, giving the water all these open orifices and bodily fluids, but it was the gasp that sucked. Water rushed down his throat and hit his lungs. His body convulsed. 

Jared was going to have so many complaints to put through to management when he got back to civilization. 

He came up choking and flailing, scraping across the riverbed on his bum before he managed to catch and convenient root. He leaned into it, letting it support his weight while he hacked up his lungs. As a bonus, it took pressure off his abdomen, which was tight and painful and distended, and Jared really wasn’t liking his odds of reaching civilization before movement wasn’t an option anymore. His medkit would’ve come in handy right about now. If only he’d been able to reach it.

Maybe he’d let Aldis install some of those prosthetics he was always threatening Jared with. He bet the guy could figure out how to build in a medical scanner, some storage space for bacta, a few other useful things. It’d be awesome.

Jared didn’t let himself think about how much it was going to hurt to move, just pushed away from the root and let the current claim him again. Floating was actually really peaceful. He’d have to do it again sometime, only in a pool where Stormtroopers and Raptors weren’t trying to hunt him down and kill him. Maybe he’d con Jensen into going with him.

His heart sank when he heard the speeder bike. If they’d tracked him to the river already, he was done. He could go to ground, maybe keep them from find him, but it’d be a death sentence.

Dead or alive, he couldn’t let Zsing’s people find him.

The annoying insect-buzz of the speeder’s engine kept growing louder, so Jared looked around, found a good spot in the underbrush to go to ground, got himself in the reeds. He brought his blaster up, but wasn’t sure if he’d be using it on whoever found him or on himself. 

Then he saw who was on the speeder bike. 

Jared’s heart leapt into his throat—which was painful—but that didn’t stop his hand from groping for a rock along the riverbed. When the hunched figure came into view, Jared slung it out over the water, nearly cackling when it bounced off the side of Jensen’s head. 

Startled, Jensen cursed and flailed, fell over the bike and into the water and came up sputtering, blaster in hand and hair plastered to his head. He was pretty much the best sigh Jared had ever seen, and he’d seen a lot. 

He waved. 

Jensen’s gaze focused on him immediately. Relief loosened every line in the former child actor’s body. “Jared,” Jensen breathed. 

Jared couldn’t stop grinning. “I hope you got a good deal on that speeder bike. Looks a little rough.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jensen agreed, obviously distracted as his eyes tracked over every inch of Jared’s body, trying to figure out what was wrong, how bad it was. “Was a steal.”

A muscle spasm lit up Jared’s gut like a solar flare, stealing his response. Jared curled forward, trying to lessen the pain but it didn’t work. 

Jensen’s hands gripped his shoulders, pushed him back. “Easy,” he ordered. “Just take it easy. I’m going to get you out of here, alright? Just breathe.”

“Easy,” Jared gasped, when he’d found enough air to do so, “for you—to say.”

“Yeah.” Jensen’s hands were gentle and warm and distracting—at least until he pressed on the wrong spot. Jared swallowed his tongue. It was marginally better than screaming, just nowhere near as satisfying. “Sorry, sorry,” Jensen chanted. “You’re alright. _Stars_.”

“Mm.” _Alright_ was very definitely something Jared wasn’t, but he let the lie stand. The truth would out soon enough. “Don’t suppose you grabbed my kit?” 

“Yeah. Hold on.”

Jared’s eyes were closed, so he left them that way while Jensen splashed back to the speeder bike, did whatever he did and splashed back. 

“What do you need?”

Something for pain, because that was something he could have, a couple hours worth of surgery, a bacta bath, and a little R & R somewhere not here. He opened his eyes and found Jensen hovering over him, green eyes bright and a little wide, a little wild. 

He told him, calm as he could manage, talked Jensen through the steps that would buy them time, would hopefully save Jared’s life, and complained as much as he was expected to while Jensen got him loaded on the back of the speeder bike so he could keep Jensen calm. 

Jensen was the one who needed his wits to get them out. Jared, though—sink or swim, he already had everything he needed. The rest he could worry about when they reached civilization.


End file.
